Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer, the former Obama staffers and co-hosts of Pod Save America, were unsparing in their criticism of DNC Chair Ken Martin following his release of the highly contentious autopsy report on the 2024 presidential election. Pfeiffer went so far as to call for Martin to step down as DNC chair.

Martin released the document on Thursday with an apology for its quality, which was clearly lacking, but added he did so in an effort to restore trust in the party.

“On the 2024 DNC autopsy, Ken Martin finally agreed to release the full text of the report, which CNN published after the uproar that followed his interview with us a few weeks ago. The 192-page report is riddled with inaccuracies, at times incoherent,” Favreau began, adding:

Ultimately incomplete, the section headlined “Conclusion” comes with an annotation that says, “This section was not provided by the author.” Still, Joel, you need to know there’s also no mention of Biden’s decision to run again, his age, Gaza, or inflation. Dan, do you have some thoughts you’d like to share?

Pfeiffer replied, “This is why I think Ken Martin should step down. I think this is a bridge too far. He cannot repair the trust here. Everything we’ve seen shows he’s not the right person for the job. I’m sorry—that seems like a harsh thing to say.”

“He has an impossible job. We have worked with many DNC chairs. Even under the best circumstances, the job is really, really hard. No one has ever seen a successful DNC chair. People are hammered for it. But the thing is, Ken Martin is now the distraction that he was trying to avoid,” Pfeiffer continued, adding:

Like he says in his post, “My job is winning elections.” Well, the best thing for Democrats who win elections is to have a fresh start with the DNC, both now and in 2028, where the trust issue matters so much more because the DNC is going to run the presidential primary. They’re going to set up the debates.

They’re going to pick the calendar, which is a huge thing. They’re going to make decisions about how delegates are allocated. They’re going to deal with states that try to jump the calendar. All of this matters. And when people don’t trust the DNC—as happened in 2016, when emails came out as part of the Russian hacks of DNC emails that showed that people at the DNC were favoring Hillary over Bernie — people didn’t trust the DNC. They didn’t trust the process. They thought it was rigged, and it hurt in the general election. We need people to trust the process.

Favreau largely agreed, “If it was just the autopsy and this was like just one incident here, that would be one thing. But the fact that it goes to trust issues and credibility, and as Ken says in his statement, ‘We need to be able to trust the Democratic Party, and people need to be able to trust us again’ — it is indicative of a larger issue that he has had since taking this role as chairman of the DNC.”

Pfeiffer concluded, “I mean, I hope he would be willing to look at the reality of the situation and recognize that because of the mistakes he made, the best thing for the party would be to step down. I don’t think he’s going to do that, since we’re in this mess because he was trying to protect himself, not the party.”

Watch the clip above.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!